On Thursdays we review albums that are considered “classic”. Be you. Be yourself. Be the person you want to be; simply exist. Stay true to the core of who you are as an individual, no matter what others want or expect from you. This is the premise behind an album that raised the constantly shifting, metaphorical bar in hip-hop culture. This album was the aptly named, Be by Common, which was released in 2005. He released this album three years following the critically divided experimental album, Electric Circus. The divisive nature of that album is what allowed Be to shine like a supernova. Unlike it’s predecessor, Be allowed very little room for criticism. Continue reading Throwback Thursday Review: Be | Common→
On Thursdays we review albums that are considered “classic”. No matter your personal thoughts on the man, or his music for that matter, Kid Cudi is an artist with the best of them. From the very beginning of his musical career, he has experimented with sounds that were foreign to both the mainstream and underground communities. His psychedelic, electronic beats were capable of providing equally uplifting and depressing soundscapes. For a bit of reassurance, Kanye West himself, said that Cudi was his “favorite artist living today”. His first major label release, Man On The Moon: End Of Day, was an album that gave hip-hop this first taste of ‘different’. Creativity abound left fans clamoring for Cudi’s promise of more. This came in the form of a direct follow-up, Man On The Moon 2: The Legend of Mr. Rager. From the moment you press play, the sounds grab you and maintain their grasp just as easily Cudi’s character seems to lose his as the story progresses. That aspect of story, in fact, is what made this five-act epic so enthralling. So often hip-hop artists release albums bereft of any cohesiveness and you are left feeling detached from the music. This album was so much more than just a collection of songs deemed good enough for an LP; they combine to form a narrative and expertly portray a musicians’ struggle with fame and reality.
Every Thursday we review albums that are considered “classic” in our “Throwback Thursday Review” series. This week it’s the classic fire flames debut from one of hip hop’s greatest duos: The Clipse’s Lord Willin’. Ahhh, this was the album that started it all for me. This was the very first hip hop album that I ever listened to, and Lord Willin’ was the album that got me into the genre for the long haul. This classic LP swayed me from groups like Fall Out Boy and Rise Against, genres like alt rock and punk rock, and I finally realized that rap and hip hop is the most complete genre in terms of all the factors that go into the making of an album and the complete product that is released.
On Thursdays we review albums that are considered “classic”. Without a doubt, this will be our most critically unsupported “classic” album for a Throwback Thursday review yet, but I stand by the LP none-the-less. Although it was not received with critical acclaim and accolades upon its release, Pretty Ricky’s debut LP Bluestars is a classic and highly underrated R&B album. This project was much more than just the album that brought fans ‘Grind On Me’, rather it is full of great tracks top to bottom. Released almost a decade ago, this album has aged very well, even though the careers of Pleasure P, Baby Blue, Slick’em, and Spectacular have not. With tracks like ‘Your Body’, ‘On the Hotline’, ‘Nothing But a Number’, and of course ‘Grind On Me’, Bluestar is one of the best R&B group albums of all time, no disrespect to Boyz II Men, TLC, and Destiny’s Child. It is really hard to think of any R&B group since Pretty Ricky, to do it as well as these four men did with their solo album, and although they have since broke up, just last year rumors circulated over a possible reunion tour. A Bluestars 2 maybe?
On Thursdays we review albums that are considered “classic”. This week we will review the classic Wu-Tang Clan LP, GZA’s Liquid Swords. Classic is a word that holds heavy weight within hip-hop music conversations. Today, it is often used as a way to describe current songs, albums and artists that will one day become a classic, or “future-classic” if you will. Yet, many fans of hip-hop will unwaveringly stand by the statement that the 90’s was the golden era for the art form, full of timeless classics. The 90’s saw the gradual movement of hip-hop into the mainstream and showed that there was a market for hip-hop outside of strictly urban communities. One of these classic groups was the infamous, Wu-Tang Clan. A group comprised of a diverse handful of New Yorkers such as: Founder RZA, Method Man, Raekwon, Ghostface Killah, Inspectah Deck, U-God, Masta Killa, the late Ol’ Dirty Bastard and GZA or The Genius.
On Thursdays we review albums that are considered “classic”. This week we will review the classic sophomore LP that gave music fans tracks like ‘Diamonds from Sierra Leone’, ‘Gold Digger’, ‘Touch the Sky’ and more, Kanye West’s Late Registration. Coming off his critically acclaimed and Grammy Award winning debut The College Dropout, Mr. West and the rap world had great expectations for this album, expectations that most artists likely could not live up to. However, instead of falling victim to the sophomore album curse, Kanye delivered and put out another near perfect album. This album had Kanye’s biggest radio hit, in ‘Gold Digger’, and two of the best rap songs ever created, in ‘Diamonds’ and ‘Gone’ (which wasn’t even a single). You can easily make the case that Late Registration is Kanye’s signature project and his discography’s best album.
On December 15, 2014, D’Angelo’s nearly 15 year silence was broken. His new album Black Messiah dropped seemingly out of nowhere, garnering overwhelming and instantaneous acclaim. Pitchfork Mediafocused all their attention on the album, giving it an envied 9.4/10 “Best New Music” rating and plastering D’Angelo mentions all over the sight. They still can’t shut up about it, as goes for most other music publications, which is rare in a digital age where trends and albums come and go without much thought. Black Messiah is without a doubt bound to gain high marks amongst best of lists with the passage of time due to the immediate positive reaction to such a shock release. However, it is imperative to understand where such enormous hype and anticipation for D’Angelo came from. This R&B aficionado’s sophomore release is the genesis of his critical and even commercial obsession.
On Thursdays we review albums that are considered “classic”. This week we will review the classic LP that has been recently named the most ground-breaking album of all time by Rolling Stone, Kanye West’s game-changing 808s & Heartbreak. While Mr. West had always stepped away from conventional rap structure since the inception of his career with The College Dropout, Ye really reinvented the wheel with this one. Creating a concept album that contained 11-tracks (and one live bonus track) of music made entirely from an 808s synthesizer, themed around love and which all contained heavy use of auto-tune, Kanye made a musical masterpiece which was widely misunderstood and polarizing during its initial 2008 release but which is now the most influential album of all time. This album paved the way for today’s popular artists (mainly Drake), further introduced the world to brilliance of Kid Cudi (who had a vast influence on the album’s sound), and showed us that even when Kanye “can’t sing” he can make a singing album better than anyone else.
Why should we care about Eric Sean Nally? Straight from his mouth, he considers the band he plays in as “the rabble-rousing pack of fucks called Foxy Shazam, AKA the Michael Jordan of Rock N Roll.” If you’ve seen them live, that quote is as damning as ever. Eric will swallow his microphone, dress in elaborate, Queen-esque costumes, yowl incessantly, and eat lit cigarettes on stage. A YouTube video shows him crawling on the side walk, banging his head non stop for it’s entirety. Foxy Shazam are a rebel rousing pack of fucks indeed, and they are here to destroy your conservative notions of what constitutes as rock n’ roll.
On Thursdays we review albums that are considered “classic”. This week we are reviewing Emergency & I, the 1999 album from the Washington D.C. indie band The Dismemberment Plan, a game changing album for indie music.
Growing up can be a neurotic experience. You wake up one day, and you’re in a crappy one bedroom apartment by yourself, late for work. Cursing yourself, you scramble out of bed, throw your clothes on and jump into your deteriorating 96’ Geo hatchback. You spill coffee on lap and it stains your new pants, screaming more obscenities. The Geo takes 2 minutes to start, the radio is broken, you somehow cut your leg on something and now it’s bleeding, and you’ve been lovesick for months to the point of nausea. That cute girl from the record store you fell hard for hasn’t responded to your texts for months, your boss calls you screaming “where the f*ck are you?”, and now you’re a complete wreck. Urban life can be a drag.
The Early Registration 